Zac Efron Talks Marriage Equality, Gay Rumors & New Film The Paperboy

Via The Advocate:

Zac Efron was turning gay heads way before director Lee Daniels stripped him to his skivvies for the pulpy, ’60s-set southern thrillerThe Paperboy, which steams up theaters October 5. The High School Musical heartthrob is finally ready to return the love in his first gay press interview, which even he acknowledges is long overdue.
It’s good to see you return to your dancing roots with Nicole Kidman in the trailer for The Paperboy, but your moves seem to have gotten wetter and more naked.Believe it or not, that dance in the rain wasn’t planned. Nicole’s fun to work with because she’s very improvisational. She just started dancing with me, and we went with the moment.
Surely you knew that scene would attract some prurient attention.With a scene like that, you just have to stick with it and see where it takes you. After the fact, though, I remember thinking, Oh, jeez, what did I just get myself into?
Matthew McConaughey, your Paperboy costar, helped design his thong for Magic Mike. Did you help select your white briefs?I did, yeah. It’s a period movie, so there weren’t really a lot of choices. Initially, I wondered if my character would even wear underwear at all. But that would’ve been a very different movie.
You’ve worked with other gay directors, including Adam Shankman on Hairspray, but Lee Daniels has often spoken about how much his “gay sensibility” translates to his work. In fact, at a press conference for The Paperboy in Cannes earlier this year, Lee even made light of a connection between his being his gay and your being somewhat eroticized on-screen. Did you have any reservations or did you embrace Lee’s sensibility from the start?I’ve always just embraced Lee as a brilliant artist, so I followed him blindly, trustingly, and wholeheartedly. He’s searching for beauty and truth in every scene, so I believed in him and always felt safe. I was a fan of Lee’s work — I thought Precious was so marvelous and real — and I knew that he had a lot to teach me. All he required of me was that I be fearless, and that’s something I’m really working on right now in my career.
Screen grabs of you in wet undies made quite an impression in the gay blogosphere, but your presence on gay blogs is certainly nothing new.It’s very flattering. After High School Musical and Hairspray, I’ve always felt embraced by the gay community, and I feel incredibly grateful and honored. This is actually a very special interview for me. I’m extremely aware of the support I’ve gotten from you guys over the years, and it’s amazing that it’s taken this long to sit down and actually discuss it, but please know that it hasn’t gone unappreciated. I’m so excited to be talking to you.
When did gay fans first come to your attention?I really felt that support after High School Musical. I think the gay audience related to my character Troy, because it really was a story of embracing who you are, no matter how different you might be, and not being afraid to show it. That’s a universal theme for everyone, but it specifically resonated with the gay community, and I felt very proud of that.
Do you remember your first interaction with gay people?I started doing local theater so young — I was 12 — so to me, being gay was just another way that you can be. I never really had time to think about it or have any preconceived notions. I don’t judge anyone and I never have.
You’ve said in the past that the older college kids who performed with your local theater were your first role models.Absolutely. I might’ve been less aware of it back then, but without question I had gay role models.
After your involvement in last year’s Footloose remake fell through, fans worried that you might be done with musicals for good. Do you see more musical theater in your future?Without a doubt, I’d love to do Broadway. I actually can’t wait to get back to musical theater. There’s a part of me that wishes I could go do it right now, but there’s also a part of me that knows I need to tackle other types of acting opportunities first. I want to be a well-rounded, versatile performer. Until I master other things, it would be hard for me to get back to musical theater. But that will always be my home base and where I feel the most free, and it’s something I will definitely do again, even it it’s just for pleasure and personal fulfillment.
The Paperboy also marks McConaughey’s first gay role. Are you interested in tackling a gay character?I’d never take a role just for the sake of playing gay, but I’m always looking for a role that’s challenging, different, and entails some risk, so there’s no doubt in my mind that one of those characters will be gay at some point in the future. It’s always interesting to delve into unexplored territory, and that would be a new avenue for me. I definitely wouldn’t be afraid.
In a 2008 Details profile, the writer brought up the subject of gay rumors, particularly as they related to blogger Perez Hilton’s online speculation about you. You replied, “Honestly, if the worst he can say about me is that I’m gay, then I think I’ll be fine. I can handle it.” That was a pretty cool and classy response.Thank you. I don’t like to live in fear about things like rumors and backlash to begin with — that’s the way I was raised — but I just can’t see what’s so wrong about being gay.
Last year a number of blogs posted a picture of you wearing a FCKH8 T-shirt that read, “Some Dudes Marry Dudes. Get Over It.” Unfortunately, it was soon revealed to be Photoshopped.Yeah, that picture was fake, but a couple days after it went around, a fan sent me a shirt identical to the one in the picture. So now I do own that shirt.
Have you worn it?I’m sure I have and I’m sure I will. It’s still hanging up somewhere.
So what are your thoughts on marriage equality — and dudes marrying dudes?It’s an issue that affects so many people in my life — a lot of my close friends and some of the most influential people around me. I just want them all to be happy. It would make me so happy to see them able to live their lives and do what they want to do.

The word on the street is that you throw a mean party. Do gay friends make the exclusive guest list? [Laughs] You’re on for the next one.

The Advocate Endorses President Obama

By saying aloud, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” in a televised interview on ABC, he has sparked conversation domestically and internationally. While he is our president at home, globally he’s an icon, a symbol of the promise of America, of the promise of equality. Obama may be the most prominent man on the planet ever, given the pervasiveness of modern media and his anomalous and historic nature as the first black American president; he is surely the single most recognizable head of state on the globe. By virtue of his unique position, his endorsement of marriage equality is not merely rhetoric. His words constitute action. On the very face of it, his statement is enormous, and has the power to move millions in a way that a statement from no other person could have.

Out Magazine Lays Off Entire Staff

Joe.My.God. reports:

Capitol New York reports that Out Magazine has laid off its entire editorial staff.

The editorial staff of the influential gay lifestyle magazine Out is being laid off with one month’s severance as of Friday, Capital has learned. But according to Out editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin, it’s more complicated than that. Hicklin said he will hire back an unspecified number of editors on a contract basis into a new company he is founding called Grand Editorial. It will operate the magazine as a contractor for Here Media, a subsidiary of Regent Media, which acquired Out in 2008. Hicklin told Capital there will be no reduction in the frequency of the magazine or other major changes to the content. “This was not a cost-cutting measure,” he said.

Not a cost-cutting measure?

Out is Hicklin’s first, and so far only, client. He said he plans to offer long-term contracts at Grand to “most” of his 12 editorial employees at Out. Should any of them take it, he said, the gig will come with flexible hours and the opportunity to work on other projects in the Grand stable, but not full-time salaries or benefits. (They will be contracted freelancers.) [snip] Hicklin said he doesn’t have any outside investors and that revenue at this point will be project-based, a prospect that has been met with gentle skepticism from some Out staffers: Here Media has had problems paying its freelancers and vendors over the past several years.

RELATED: In November 2009 it was announced that The Advocate would henceforth be shipped only in combination with sister publication Out, ending after 40+ years the stand-alone status of the nation’s most highly regarded LGBT news source.

The Advocate’s Coverboy: Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum

The Advocate Celebrates 45 Years 

Picture Caption: Advocate publisher Joe Valentino, Walter Isaacson’s Bill Kapfer, Advocate editor-in-chief Matthew Breen, and Advocate Group publisher Joe Landry

The Advocate Magazine: Nancy Pelosi Calls Out Homocons

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi comments on the attacks on Barney Frank by the likes of GOProud:

Oh, but what about them? He [Barney Frank] chooses a party that supports his values. They’ve chosen a party that supports their income — a party that denigrates them and treats them with disrespect.

The Advocate Co-Founder Aristide Laurent Dead At 70

The Advocate reports:

Aristide Laurent, a longtime gay rights activist and one of the founders ofThe Advocate, died at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday following a long battle with cancer.

Along with Richard Mitch, Bill Mau, and Sam Allen, Laurent in 1967 created the gay newspaper The Los Angeles Advocate; it would soon become a national magazine known simply asThe Advocate. Laurent, an ABC television employee, produced early issues of the The Advocateclandestinely in the studio’s basement print shop. Laurent used a pseudonym, as most did at the time, and wrote a nightlife column for the nascent publication.

When The Advocate briefly moved to the Bay Area in 1975, Laurent stayed in Los Angeles and started NewsWest, a gay-related newspaper that printed until 1977.

Laurent fought vociferously against police harassment of gays, participating in riots at L.A.’sBlack Cat bar, which predated Stonewall by two years. Laurent was also active in ACT UP in the ’80s, and attended the March on Washington in 1993. 

The activist was born in Magnolia Springs, Ala. in 1941, the son of a farm hand and his wife. Laurent was an altar boy and choir leader at his local church before joining the Air Force in 1960, where he served for four years as a signals intelligence operator in Turkey, as well as an instructor to new recruits.

Laurent is survived by nieces Tina Weeks and Natalie Dykes of Magnolia Springs, Ala. and a nephew, Kevin Weeks of Baton Rouge, La. Services will be held at St. John’s Catholic Church in Magnolia Springs on Nov. 5. Memorial contributions may be sent to Best Friends Animal Society.  

Backstory: Gonna Fly - Cher & Chaz

Jeff Yarbrough, from The Advocate, writes:

“My mother wants to talk to you.” It was a sentence I hadn’t heard since I was a schoolyard bully. Only this time, the kid’s mom was Cher. Chastity Bono had poked her head in to my office at The Advocatewhere I was working as Editor in Chief. Bono joined our staff in the summer of 1995 as an occasional columnist and contributing writer. I had offered her the gig following a cover story about her that had appeared in April of that year. “Please talk to her,” the recently out lesbian said, flashing an infectious grin. “She wants to make sure you’ll take good care of me.” Chastity continued, as if reading from a prompter: “Mom is concerned that you’re a radical journalist and will sweep me up in a counterculture and make me a symbol of something.”

I asked, “Did you remind your mom that she was a radical artist, swept-up in a counterculture, and was made a symbol of something?” We both smiled broadly. “Of course I’ll talk to your mother.”

A few weeks passed. Chastity’s first column appeared in the magazine. One morning my assistant yelled from outside my office: “Cher’s on Line One!” He gasped, laughed, and squealed all at once. It sounded like he was choking. “Put her through!” I barked. He made another choking noise as he transferred her call. The phone on my desk began to ring and flash red.

The first thing of consequence Cher said to me was, “Please don’t write about this,” which I haven’t until now. Our chat was not brief. We discussed The Advocate’s mission statement. She said she’d read the magazine “over the years” and gave me her take on it, which wasn’t all that flattering. She questioned me regarding Chastity’s role at the publication. After answering, I rattled-off some acquaintances Cher and I had in common, thinking such associations might ease concerns: Bob Mackie (dresser), Bruce Vilanch (writer), David Geffen (ex-boyfriend), Herb Ritts (photographer), Bill Sammeth (ex-manager). Cher stopped me short of finishing my A-gay list. “I know who you know,” she said, in an octave below her normal speaking voice. Next came the point of the personal phone call: “If you do anything to Chaz that I don’t think is cool, I’ll come and get you.”

16 years later, Cher is seated near me inside a darkened soundstage at CBS in Hollywood. We are members of a studio audience about to watch her son perform on the mystifyingly successful TV show, Dancing with the Stars. Cher adjusts her Missoni-like black and orange poncho several times just as the show goes live. I look at her slight, constant smile, guessing she is hyper-aware that her son has been swept-up in a counterculture and has become a symbol of something.

After almost two hours of mediocre dance routines, Chaz is up. Dressed in a boxing robe and gloves, Chaz labors through a performance choreographed to “Gonna Fly Now” from the filmRocky. During the routine, Cher watches intently. Her fists are clenched. Her eyes are wide. She leans forward over a random Kardashian who’s seated in front of her. After running up a flight of stairs and triumphantly raising his hands over his head, Chaz wraps it up with a masculine flourish. Cher is on her feet now. Her tears start to come, streaming-down her face. Cher receives the judges’ feel-good reviews of her son’s footwork with elation. Chaz heads off the stage as the studio darkens for a commercial break. Under cover of the dimly-lit room, Cher begins to dry her tears with a tissue. People start to congratulate her. She’s truly smiling now, talking openly with those around her. She is all Mom; protective, loving, supportive, raw, egotistical. She is visibly proud of her son — not for what he did, but for who he is.

16 years earlier, immediately after Cher had threatened to come and get me, I remember the wind being sucked out of my lungs. She stayed silent on the other end of the receiver while I caught my breath. I said “You’re selling Chastity short. She won’t let anybody take advantage of her. She’s truly your kid.”

Cher blew by my glowing opinion of her daughter and said, “I want you to know where I stand on this. I am watching. And call me if you think I need to know something.” And then Chastity’s mother was gone. But her status as a fiercely protective mother of an LGBT child endures.

Forty Under 40:Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge

The Advocate reports:

Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes and his boyfriend, Freedom to Marry Political Director Sean Eldridge, are among the saluted on this year’s list of forty LGBT leaders and newsmakers under the age of 40.

The Advocate reviews:

Porn entrepreneur and Advocate columnist Michael Lucas calls out the Left for blaming the Giffords assassination attempt on right wing rhetoric.

Not that Michael Lucas is not entitle to his opinion. But since when it matters what a Porn Star has to say about politics? What kind of criteria he has in order to criticize what educated & informed anchors of MSNBC do or say. Why would Michael Lucas tell them how to do their job? They don’t go to his film studios and take the dicks out of his mouth. There, I’ve said it.

Paladino’s Gay Nephew Speaks Out

Whenever conservatives speak out against civil rights issues and, therefore, minorities groups, like whenever they say they’re against Illegal Immigrants and it turns out they’ve been hiring illegal immigrants; or whenever they say there’re not racist and it turns out they been sending racists emails; or even better, when they say they’re not gay and they are caught having gay sex at airport’s bathrooms; it’s just a blast for me to see them fall. 

This time once again Carl Paladino (New York’s Republican gubernatorial candidate ) got himself in trouble with the LGBTQ Community, a Rabbi and his own family.

 The Advocate reports:

Jeff Hannon, the 23-year-old gay nephew of Carl Paladino (he also works for the campaign), spoke out Tuesday about his uncle’s antigay remarks, saying that he was “very offended” by the comments.
According to the New York Post, “In a brief phone interview yesterday, Hannon, in his first public remarks on the incident, told the Post, ‘Obviously, I’m very offended by his comments.’”
The Post reported that Hannon has not reported for work at the Buffalo campaign headquarters since Sunday, the day his uncle told ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking homosexuality was an “equally valid or successful option.” He also criticized his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, for taking his children to the gay pride parade.
On Monday, Paladino adviser Roger Stone told The Advocate that Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo businessman, had embraced his nephew at a time in his life when other family members struggled with his sexual orientation.
As Paladinopalooza churned through day 3 in New York on Tuesday, the Republican gubernatorial candidate was greeted by gay protesters in New Paltz and Buffalo, who demanded that he apologize for his remarks, which he did in a statement later in the day.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that state records show that Paladino once collected rent from two gay clubs located in buildings he owned in downtown Buffalo. One of them, called Cobalt, operated as a gay bar from 2004 to 2005 and was run by Paladino’s son, William. 

Let them talk, that they will soon fall.

Chase New Left Media Darling: Chase Whiteside.

The Advocate:

One unforeseen result of the Tea Party movement is the ascension of Chase Whiteside, a 22-year-old student journalist from Ohio. Dressed in colorful shirts and ties when he’s on camera, Whiteside has become a new progressive media darling with his reports from conservative political events. His interviews at Tea Party gatherings, a Sarah Palin book signing, and Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C., have racked up over 4.9 million hits on YouTube as of mid September.

Joe.My.God. said:

Many of you have expressed admiration for NewLeftMedia interviewer Chase Whiteside, whose impassive apparent approval has allowed so many teabaggers to hang themselves in his videos. You knew somebody that smart had to be gay, right? Here’s Whiteside’s blog, where he’s rather frank about his life. He’s single, not looking, hates nipple play, is cut but considers circumcision to be a crime, and likes guys who start with S: “Smart, shy, short, swarthy, smiling, sincere, spry, sweet.”

jcblew

I hope to see more material from New Left Media soon.

Check out NLM’s website: http://newleftmedia.com/

It’s incredible that in the age of information, people still think they can get away with lies now when everything could be recorded on any format. As Bill Maher said once, Google & Youtube are tumbling down an old Institution: lying.

Immediately after this afternoon’s Senate vote preventing debate of the National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. John McCain met with a group of journalists including The Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld and Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner and insisted that the military does not “go out and seek to find out if someone’s sexual orientation.”

So, the case of major Mike Almy was just part of our imagination…